The prospect of hardline immigration enforcement by the incoming Donald Trump administration is growing with each passing day. As The Intercept has reported, the formal transition team for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement is full of lobbyists for blue chip surveillance contractors and architects of intrusive DHS programs that racially profile people of color.

Trump’s plans for an immigration enforcement surge have been met with resistance from the California state legislature, as well as the mayors of so-called sanctuary cities such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, and elsewhere. On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to cut off federal funding for sanctuary cities that defied federal immigration enforcement efforts. There are over three hundred such cities around the country.

Despite incoming California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s challenge to Trump’s team to “come at us” over immigration enforcement, and the state legislature’s ongoing efforts to bolster legal representation for people in deportation proceedings and restrict law enforcement cooperation with ICE, local law enforcement in California is decidedly apprehensive about confronting the feds.

One of the programs local police fear will suffer from any cutoff of federal funding or cooperation is the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Taskforce, a hallmark of American law enforcement’s efforts to fight drug trafficking and transnational crime. Established in 1982, currently more than half a billion dollars in OCDETF funding is disbursed to nine regions throughout the country to cover the costs of joint federal-local investigations and prosecutions of entities such as Mexican drug cartels, street gangs, the Italian Camorra, and the Russian mob. It is the centerpiece of the federal war on drugs.

One veteran California police officer from a sanctuary city who has worked on dozens of joint-federal task forces over the years said he feared the consequences of losing OCDETF funding and manpower. “I don’t think people understand what it would mean to cut off federal assistance,” the officer said. “I’d lose all my OCDETF funding, my investigative assistance, all the resources we use to go after seriously bad dudes.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California-Irvine and an expert in both constitutional law and federal practice, told The Intercept in an email that cutting recalcitrant cities off from federal assistance would be a difficult, but feasible prospect.

“The question is whether the Trump administration and Congress are going to condition federal funds on cities cooperating with federal immigration authorities. If so, this will be challenged in the courts,” Chemerinsky wrote. “But there is no doubt that such heavy-handed tactics would seriously hinder cooperation between federal and state law enforcement authorities.”

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, right, speaks with Public Defender Jeff Adachi before a meeting at City Hall in San Francisco by city leaders and community activists to reaffirm the city’s commitment to being a sanctuary city in response to Donald Trump’s support of deportations and other measures against immigrants Monday, Nov. 14, 2016.

Photo: Jeff Chiu/AP

OCDETF task forces are at the forefront of the government’s fight against the distribution networks of drug cartels throughout the country. A 21-month investigation across California, Maryland, and Minnesota in 2009 resulted in the arrest of more than seven hundred alleged associates of the Sinaloa cartel, the seizure of almost $60 million in cash, and massive amounts of heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine, and ecstasy.

Another high profile case to come out of OCDETF collaboration is a series of eight indictments in Chicago that led to the convictions of Pedro and Margarito Flores, twin brothers who controlled the Sinaloa Cartel’s operation in that city and eventually flipped on their superiors, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. The United States Attorney in Chicago is one of several federal prosecutors competing for the right to try El Chapo when he is extradited to the United States.

In Northern California, an OCDETF task force built off investigative work by local Bay Area law enforcement to arrest and charge several Norteño gang members who ran a drug trafficking network that distributed methamphetamine, prescription drugs, heroin, cocaine, and marijuana from the Bay down to the Central Valley. The network, headed by Oscar Vladimir “Cuddy” Escalante, trafficked large amounts of narcotics as far away as Arkansas and Mississippi. Court documents show the investigation to be a classic federal-local task force case, where the street-level informants and manpower of local police was complimented by the wiretapping expertise and interstate jurisdiction of the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Miller Shealy, a professor at the Charleston School of Law and a former OCDETF prosecutor in South Carolina, said the joint federal-local task forces are essential to public safety.

“This notion that the federal government or the states can just go it alone when it comes to big organized crime is hogwash,” Shealy said. “The feds are an extremely thin blue line. The state has the boots on the ground, the intelligence resources and contacts that the federal agencies need. What the feds bring is training, leadership, technology and the ability to act across state lines.”

However, Shealy doubted whether Trump’s choice for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, would handicap a central component of the war on drugs. “With an incoming administration that at least has a tough pro-law enforcement line so far, leaving innocent people unshielded against these people and these activities would be counterproductive in all sorts of ways,” Shealy said. “I would be shocked if it came to that.”

In sanctuary cities, there are already signs of division between elected officials and immigrant advocates. In San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee is now opposing a $5 million request by Public Defender Jeff Adachi to fund legal representation for immigrants in removal proceedings. Sources in the immigrant advocacy community who have attended confidential meetings with members of the Los Angeles Police Department and Mayor Eric Garcetti’s staff told The Intercept that city officials walked out of a recent meeting with immigrant advocates when pressured about the possibility of cutting off or restricting LAPD’s cooperation with ICE.

Los Angeles’ stance on immigration and cooperation with ICE stands in sharp contrast to the Orange County City of Santa Ana, where the city council approved a sanctuary policy this week and is considering cutting off ICE’s access to the local jail and its databases.

Top photo: A law enforcement official organizes bags of heroin to be displayed before a press conference regarding a major drug bust, at the office of the New York Attorney General, September 23, 2016 in New York City.

We depend on the support of readers like you to help keep our nonprofit newsroom strong and independent. Join Us

Related

Contact the author:

Ali Winston obviously has no clue what a drug Task Forces does and just took the word of the pigs on this. I lived in the hood in west Oakland and saw first hand these disgusting pigs physically attacking people on the street. Like the other commenters here said, fuck the war on drugs. Drugs should be legal just like alcohol. The war on drugs is nothing more than police state crap that serves both the prison industrial complex and racism, secondarily pandering to irresponsible parents who hysterically fear their kids might do drugs (could actually be the best thing that happens to the kids depending on the drugs and level of self-control).

I agree that immigration policies need an overhaul, but whining about the consequences of failing to cooperate with the Feds is childish.

Of course there is going to be push back if a city decides that they are going to ignore federal law.

Honestly I’m surprised that the Feds haven’t arrested, in mass, all of the pot growers in CO and WA. Don’t misconstrue my motivations. Pot should have never become a Schedule I drug, but all of these people are still violating Federal laws regardless of what their state legislature says.

It would seem to be common sense that the new writers here should be familiar with the other articles on the topics that have been published here.

These joint task forces are a disaster.
The three cases of organized crime cited in this article are the exception, not the rule.
If such cases were what the joint task forces were actually spending most of their time and resources on, the excellent journalism in previous articles here exposing the massive abuses and waste wouldn’t have been necessary.

Mr Winston, please familiarize yourself with this body of great work that contradicts your article.
Gung ho drug warriors have well known integrity problems, and you should at least acknowledge that reality.

Truth be told, most of that $500,000,000 is squandered by small time LE busting low level pot users because that is the EASY way to collect federal dollars. Take away reimbursement for pot arrests and the local interest in Federal money will dry up because they will have to do real HARD police work to go after opiate dealers! So is the take away that even big city cops have to be paid federal money to do their job? Just bag the whole program!

Previous administrations, both R and D, were not enforcing this law. That doesn’t excuse the cities for disobeying it, and they shouldn’t act shocked when a President finally decides to enforce the law.

Maybe the cops are worried they will lose funding, but not being able to ‘prosecute’ the absurd and ever-failing War on Drugs sounds like a good thing to me. You can bet Oakland, CA is far more concerned about fire safety right now then hassling Chicanos.
Drug use is a symptom, not a cause.

If stopping drug use in America is a worthwhile goal, why not try something different than the same old, same old “War on Drugs”. It isn’t like what we have been doing for the last 50 years has been a success.

These cities will not be able to “have their cake and eat it too.” They will have to choose between solidarity with criminal illegals or the safety of own citizens. The federal government will undoubtedly make funding contingent upon enforcement of the laws on the books. Get ready for officials to back-off their boastful defiance as reality sets in.

You don’t get to cherry pick what laws you want to enforce and don’t..you made your bed now lay in it. Raise the taxes on the citizens who support this baloney and make THEM pay the cost. That’s how its suppose to work.

I agree for the opposite reason of you. The very first US immigration law was John Adams’s Alien and Sedition Act, passed in support of his quasi-war with France. (Before, our borders were open, and anyone not a slave could come here.) Jefferson and Madison helped draft the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. Those states refused to abide by the law, stating that it was unconstitutional.
Given how the US immigration laws contradict these clear views of our founding fathers, it should be time for some states to find new guards for their future security. Plus, every group has the right to self-determination, per the Declaration of Independence and the Kosovo precedent.

Oh no! That’s terrible! Keep the cash flowing! But hang on, isn’t the War on Drugs an load of bullshit? Oh yeah! That’s great! Stop the cash! But hang on, drugs are bad. Keep the cash flowing! But hang on, it is everyday people fully aware of all the consequences that are taking the drugs…

It is interesting that the main thought of the concerned parties is federal FUNDING. I feel sorry for the poor bozos that do all the honest work in the USA and pay all that tax money to pay for all those Police and Feds, all those Politicians, all those Military Personnel, all those Civil Servants and still find enough to subsidise their mega-corp bullying competitors. I guess they are the ones who voted for Trump. Oops.